June 2013

June 25, 2013

The masculinity of his myth and prose style made Ernest Hemingway the writer to topple for a generation of novelists in the last century. But beyond the Hemingway Code of virile heroics: man against nature, as traveler, or in war, as illustrated in such iconic works as The Sun Also Rises, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Old Man and the Sea, even A Moveable Feast, the Hemingway family inherited an untoward legacy of suicide. As told in Barbara Kopple’s new documentary film, Running from Crazy, to be featured this week at The Nantucket Film Festival where the two time academy award winning documentarian will be awarded for Special Achievement in Documentary Storytelling, there were 7 suicides, including Hemingway’s father and granddaughter, the model and actress Margaux. As a mom, fearful of this legacy, her sister and main focus of this film, Mariel Hemingway reveals a family history that is to a large degree a cautionary tale for her own daughters, and a story of hope.

June 22, 2013

It’s not likely you’ll want to take your kids to SeaWorld after seeing Blackfish, a riveting documentary expose starring former trainers of orca whales, taken from the wild. It is hard to get warm and fuzzy over fish that weigh a few thousand pounds each, no matter how many times they leap to the ball or roll over on command, but once you see the pups separated from their mothers, or hear the sound they make when they grieve, this movie has you by the heartstrings.

June 20, 2013

Central Park offers a natural bucolic setting for Shakespeare’s lighter fare, but with this year’s Comedy of Errors, its lush greens frame an urban stage for Ephesus, a fictive town in upstate New York that harbors mob types among its citizenry. At center, three buildings rotate in the foreground representing by turns a train station (Adirondack Transit Lines), brothel, hotel, jewelry shop, a private home, Saint Bridget’s abbey with an homage to Edward Hopper’s as the back street. This smalltown, USA designed by John Lee Beatty ideally serves the shenanigans involving a set of twins, attended by another set of twins, just the fodder for Shakespearean mistaken identities. Three couples jitterbug as a preamble, signaling a jazz age time shift for the Chaplin meets Gumby of Dromio (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and the dapper man he serves Antipholus (Hamish Linklater). A Duke (Skipp Sudduth) whose voice is more Guys & Dolls—or a nod to James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano—metes justice.

June 18, 2013

This season’s extravaganza 3D epic, WWZ based on Max Brooks’ 2006 novel and directed by Mark Forster opens with a traffic jam in Philadelphia: a family-- Dad is Brad Pitt, his wife Karen (The Killing’s Mireille Enos), and their two daughters, trapped in a car. Soon you learn the cause: a Zombie takeover. On Monday, Times Square mimicked art, with pedestrians clogging a narrowed Broadway for the movie’s red carpet premiere, proving people will do anything to catch a glimpse of Brad Pitt. It’s hard to say which, art or life, was more fearsome.

June 17, 2013

She may not be as famous as her sister in soul, Aretha Franklin, but that does not make Merry Clayton any less of a diva. Her story may be famous in music history: as told in the documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom, pregnant and in curlers, she got a call in the middle of the night to sing with The Rolling Stones. That haunting riff at center in Gimme Shelter, the one you think of, almost a howl, “rape, murder, just a shot away,” that’s Clayton. Even Mick Jagger seems amazed at how the sound was made. Filmmaker Morgan Neville had to admit, after making this documentary about backup singers, he can never listen to music the same way again. Audiences are likely to feel the same.

June 13, 2013

New plays by the eminent American playwrights Neil LaBute and John Guare are an event. In Reasons to be Happy at the Lucille Lortel Theater, LaBute, who also directs, rekindles the relationship of Greg and Steph from his 2008 Reasons to be Pretty, retooling these characters with the fine actors Josh Hamilton and Jenna Fischer. As it opens in a torrent of invectives, Steph is pissed that Greg is making it with her close friend Carly (a terrific Leslie Bibb), and Greg, still passively aggressive, unable to commit, or if able, to commit so broadly as to cancel himself out, represents a form of modern man in a condition of unmanly moral and ethical vacillation, a legacy more of Prufrock than Hemingway’s adventurers. Greg hides behind books, or words, as Steph accuses. You want to scream at him too: Step up to the plate!

June 08, 2013

Running up to the Tony Awards, Cyndi Lauper was busy with events celebrating the CD release of the Kinky Boots original cast recording, and a tour that would start the day after the Tony’s. On Wednesday evening, just after a photo shoot for Vogue, Lauper signed her caricature at Sardi’s. It was hard to say what she, in a short black dress that showed deep cleavage, and flame tufted hair, thought of the drawing that made her look more blond and eh, wholesome. If Lauper wins a Tony for her music and lyrics—as well she should-- she will be the first woman to do so solo (not teamed up with a male partner).

In his time, the late ‘80’s, Morton Downy, Jr. was the hottest voice on television, loud and abrasive. For nearly two years, he brow beat and brawled his way to top ratings, ultimately alienating top tier guests, until his talk show devolved into something of a circus act, showcasing strippers and carnies, a precursor to Jerry Springer, and the in your face television of today. At the Paley Center on Wednesday night, television and media personalities: Donny Deutsch, Rosanna Scotto, Dick Cavett, Joe Conason, Dan Abrams, Peggy Siegal and others gathered for a screening of documentary Evocateur: Morton Downey Jr. As much as everyone knew about this chain smoking loud mouth, the documentary still held many surprises, including his anxiety of influence over his famous dad.